Category Archives: Arizona Scorpions

The USCL regular season ended last week with the Blaze posting a draw against our arch rivals the always-tough Arizona Scorpions. The Blaze held the match on the strength of victories by GM Yury Shulman and IM Angelo Young. Yury’s game, which he annotates below, has won the league Game of the Week. Continue reading →

Angelo Young’s return to the Blaze lineup tonight marks his 20th match since the team entered the league in 2008, and his first back in action since week 1 when he won his match in the Blaze season opening victory over the Seattle Sluggers. This week, as the 4-0 Blaze take on the 1-3 St. Louis Arch Bishops, Young will take the helm at the pivotal Board 3 spot where he will have the white pieces against FM Doug Eckert. Young has been a clutch performer on Board 3 over the years, and in 2009 he was named to the USCL 1st team All Stars for position in 2009. Aside from being the longest time member of the Blaze, Young is also perhaps one of the most committed, enthusiastic, supportive members on the team. Young is also the proprietor of the Touch Move Chess Center, located on Chicago’s north side.

Another problem from last week’s Blaze match presented and analyzed by NM Trevor Magness, Blaze alumnus and the team’s number-one Nebraska-based fan. This position occurred late in NM Sam Schmackel’s game with NM Nick Thompson. His victory in the last game of the evening to end clinched the match for the Blaze. Sam has the white pieces. Think about what move you would make, and then click below to see what Sam played and Trevor’s commentary. Continue reading →

Sam Schmakel, a sophomore at Chicago’s Whitney Young High School, came though under incredible time pressure in the clutch, in his US Chess League debut last night to prevail over his opponent, Nick Adams, to clinch a 2.5-1.5 victory for the Chicago Blaze against its tenacious arch-rival, the Arizona Scorpions. With less than 30 seconds left on his clock on move 40, Schmakel shocked and dazzled the crowd as he initiated a brutal combination by sliding his queen to the f7 square to put Adam’s King in check. Sam followed up with another check, then a knight fork of Adam’s queen and king, and when the dust settled, Sam’s passed a-pawn was primed to become queen itself. A few moves later, Adams saw no way out and resigned, which led to Sam’s GM teammates and Blaze fans breaking out into applause, as well as a sigh of relief. With this win, the Blaze are off to a 3-0 start for the season, the in the league and the best ever in the team’s history. Continue reading →

The Arizona Scorpions and the Chicago Blaze are arch rivals, though it seems almost absurd to say it, since our lifetime record with them is lopsided in the extreme. In six matches, they’ve won five, and we’ve won one. They’re tough, but we’ll go at it with them with a strong lineup tonight. Continue reading →

The Miami Sharks put up a good fight against a deep Chicago lineup consisting of 3 GM’s and last minute pinch hitter Todd Freitag, but in the end, lost to the Blaze by a 3.5-.5 margin. While the match score may suggest otherwise, there was no shortage of excitement at Skokie’s North Shore Chess Center yesterday evening.Continue reading →

[Note: The Chicago Blaze lost their second match in a row last night, this time falling to the Arizona Scorpions 2.5-1.5. Tean annotator NM Jeremy Kane has this report on the games.]

By NM Jeremy Kane

I apologize to the thousands of Blaze fans out there for my inability to come up with a Game of the Week last week. Not only was it the first week where the Blaze failed to win a game, it also brought the team’s season score in games I personally attended to 0.5/3, in comparison to their score of 4/4 the rest of the season. So, this week I kept safely away from the action, huddled up in my apartment on the other side of town, not even remembering about the match until the middle games were well underway. Continue reading →